Sweets ── Wagashi (Japanese sweets)
Arare
Arare — small, bite-sized pieces of glutinous rice cracker
Tiny, bite-sized pieces of glutinous rice cracker, baked or fried. The name is said to come from the sound and motion of the pieces popping in the pan, resembling hail falling from the sky, and one account ties it to a court tooth-hardening ritual.
- Dry confections
Lineage
What it's made of
Tiny, fingertip-sized pieces of glutinous rice cracker, baked or fried. Being small, the pieces cook through quickly and toast up fast, and take a wide range of seasonings — soy sauce, salt, seaweed. Many variants add color or flavor — a pink cherry-blossom tint, a shrimp aroma — and the tiny arare sweets offered at the Doll's Festival are said to belong to this same lineage. The soy-glazing step scorches easily, said to demand quick, even work to coat every piece without burning.
How it's made
Dried mochi is cut into small pieces with a knife, then roasted in a pan or fried in oil. The heat is adjusted while watching the pieces pop and puff, finished with a coating of soy sauce or salt. It broadly splits into a soy-sauce-roasted savory line and a sugar-glazed sweet line, the two said to sit closer to a snack or to a confection respectively. Beyond New Year's, it is also often eaten as a festival sweet, as with the hina-arare of the Doll's Festival.
Why it took this shape
One account holds that the name comes from the sound and motion of the pieces popping in the pan, resembling hail falling from the sky. Another traces it to a Heian-era court ritual of breaking up kagami mochi at New Year's to harden the teeth for the year ahead — the very act of breaking it into small pieces tied, in this telling, to an auspicious New Year's rite. Selling savory and sweet versions together in one bag has also spread, the ease of comparing both at once said to be well liked.
Before you go
- How to use a convenience storeA quick guide to choosing rice balls and hot snacks, buying coffee, paying by cash, IC card, or tap payment, using the eat-in corner, and sorting your trash — the basics for a first visit.
- How to shop in a depachika (department store food hall)A guide to browsing prepared foods and bento, choosing wagashi as a gift with a good shelf life, sampling etiquette, end-of-day discounts, asking for cold packs and wrapping, and finding your way around a depachika floor.
- Enjoying a bussanten (regional products fair)A guide to what's sold at a bussanten (regional products fair), how to find one, when it gets crowded, shelf life and taking food home, and how to fit one around a trip.
Dishes in the same style
- Iwa OkoshiPuffed rice bound with brown sugar into a hard, rock-like bar. Said to have begun as an improvement on Dotonbori's awa okoshi (made from millet), using rice and brown sugar for a much harder bite that drew attention for its firmness.
- Kaminari OkoshiPuffed, roasted rice bound with starch syrup and sugar into a bar. Said to have first been sold as a specialty when Sensoji Temple's Thunder Gate was rebuilt in 1795, it is said to have settled in as a confection of the temple's approach.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Related lineage
- SenbeiA rice cracker made from steamed, thinly rolled non-glutinous rice flour, baked until crisp and dry. Distinguished from okaki and arare — both made from glutinous rice — mainly by this difference in rice, and seasoned simply with soy sauce or salt in forms rooted across the country.
- OkakiA rice cracker made by breaking pounded glutinous rice mochi into pieces and baking or frying them crisp. Said to have begun with breaking a kagami mochi by hand or mallet to eat, the name "okaki" is said to come from breaking it without a blade.